The user of a mobile terminal, in particular a mobile telephone, may not have easy access to it, for example because it is in a suitcase or a handbag and is not within easy reach, or the user is in a meeting, or the user does not hear the telephone ringing because of background noise, or the user may have left the mobile telephone somewhere else.
In this situation, in the case of telephone calls, there is generally a voicemail service enabling users to consult calls that they have not been able to receive directly. The arrival of a telephone call recorded by the voicemail service is notified to users by a message displayed on their mobile telephone, and thus users are informed of the arrival of a message when they again have access to their mobile telephone.
At present, mobile telephones do not receive only telephone calls. They can also receive files or faxes, necessitating the connection of the mobile terminal to a data processing terminal. Mobile terminals can also receive text, sound, or image messages (in particular text messages conforming to the Short Message Service (SMS) protocol).
All the above messages are notified to users on their mobile telephone, as a result of which users know that they can download or consult the data received, for example e-mails, missed calls, multimedia data, etc.
All the above messages, regardless of their type, are referred to generically as “events” in the remainder of the description.
Existing notification solutions are not satisfactory, however. This is because users have no choice as to how the arrival of an event is notified to them. They can be notified only via their mobile telephone, which is not necessarily easily accessible.